Ex-minister Found Dead Hours Before Testimony

Allegations Link Killing Of Journalist To The Ukraine Government.

March 5, 2005|By Peter Finn The Washington Post

MOSCOW — Ukraine's former interior minister was found dead Friday morning in an apparent suicide just hours before he was to meet with prosecutors looking into the murder of an investigative reporter in September 2000.

The gangland-style slaying of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, 31, whose decapitated body was found in a forest about 70 miles from Kiev, has long been the subject of allegations linked to the government of former President Leonid Kuchma.

Senior government officials, including Kuchma, were implicated in the killing when Socialist Party Leader Oleksander Moroz said he possessed audio tapes secretly recorded by a member of the president's security detail and played them to parliament in 2000.

Progress on a case that had laid dormant under the Kuchma administration, despite a series of ostensible investigations, has accelerated dramatically since Viktor Yushchenko became president in January.

The death by gunshot of Yuri Kravchenko, 53, at his home Friday followed an announcement earlier this week by Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Svyatoslav Piskun that investigators had identified the four people immediately involved in Gongadze's kidnapping and killing.

Yushchenko had said that solving the case and bringing the killers to justice was a moral obligation that would be one of the first priorities of his administration.

Prosecutors said Wednesday that two of the suspected killers, both Interior Ministry officers under Kravchenko, were in custody, and a third, also a police official, was ordered not to leave Kiev. An international arrest warrant was issued for a fourth man, Interior Ministry General Oleksiy Pukach, after he fled the country, officials said.

Piskun also said Wednesday that investigators had identified the "mastermind" behind Gongadze's killing but did not identify that person.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko suggested Friday that Kravchenko, who was fired by Kuchma in 2001, may not have killed himself and that his death might be an attempt to prevent others from being implicated in the conspiracy.

"If he really committed this act himself, it may indicate that he was afraid of taking responsibility for developments surrounding Gongadze's murder," Tymoshenko said, according to the Interfax news agency. "If it was not a suicide, then it was an attempt to conceal the truth about the murder."

Ukraine's Segodnya newspaper reported that Kravchenko had been put under official surveillance in December and ordered not to leave Ukraine. Some legislators said he should have been taken into custody once the prosecutor's officer began a new investigation after Yushchenko's electoral victory.

Gongadze wrote about alleged corruption in the Kuchma administration on an Internet news site and apparently infuriated the Kuchma administration with his reporting.

The tape recordings appeared to capture Kuchma talking to Kravchenko and saying that Gongadze should be "removed and thrown to the Chechens." In another excerpt, a voice similar to Kuchma's ordered aides to "deal with" with Gongadze. And a Kuchma aide said, "Let loose Kravchenko to use alternative methods," according to the tapes, which were authenticated by a private lab in the United States. The Ukrainian prosecutor's office declared them to be fakes.

Piskun said at a news conference Wednesday that Gongadze was kidnapped on a Kiev street on Sept. 16, 2000, and later strangled in the city. His corpse was decapitated, doused with gasoline and burned. His body was found in a ditch that November.